‘Proofiness’ book – raising awareness of the widespread manipulation of statistics
Written by Michelle Hards
‘Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception’ by Charles Seife provides great insight into how mathematics and statistics can, and have been, used to misinform people. For example, did you know that having a child makes you stupid? Or that having more industrial factories actually lowers child mortality?!
Even this short video of the author introducing the book provides great insight into the attempts by various companies, media and even peer-reviewed journals to create publicity by exploiting the statistics.
A 'must-read' for statisticians and non-statisticians alike!
Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 July 2011 16:47
Data collection on mobile phones: EpiSurveyor
Written by Michelle Hards
Need to collect data quickly and easily? Perhaps EpiSurveyor, a secure data collection system for mobile phones, from DataDyne can help. EpiSurveyor can be used to set up, collect and partially analyse data collected on common and inexpensive mobile phones. The data can be collected on any topic, not just health, and in any country.
Register and follow the onscreen instructions to start creating forms immediately! There is a free version, which 99% of EpiSurveyor’s users manage to use, or there are chargeable versions which are less limited. EpiSurveyor has a lot of positive feedback from many previous users, including large organisations such as the World Health Organization, and has won awards.
Last Updated on Friday, 20 May 2011 15:53
Need a statistician for a few hours a week?
Written by Michelle Hards
A UK-based medical statistician is available for around 6 hours a week. Available for individual consultations or regular work. Qualified with an MSc in Biometry, MMath and a BSc (Hons) in Mathematical Sciences, with experience in Phase I Bayesian designs, survival analysis and logistic regression. Fee dependent on scope and nature of work. If you are interested in this opportunity, email
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for more information.
Last Updated on Monday, 01 November 2010 17:16
How to present results from meta-analyses
Written by Michelle Hards
Have you performed a meta-analysis and are wondering how to present the results? A helpful article has just been published in Research Synthesis Methods, entitled ‘graphical displays for meta-analysis: an overview with suggestions for practice’.
Vitality GlowCaps sounds like a fluffy vitamin supplement but no!
GlowCaps ia a sophisticated medication compliance tracking device incorporated into a medications container. If that's not cool enough, the monitoring results in a continuous data collection from a growing number of users. It's not clear yet whether the compliance data can be incorporated into outcome data in electronic health records, but if it could be, the implications for the future of medical statistics are huge! And who owns the data, I wonder?
See more about it on the company's video format annual report for 2009.
